The seabed holds some fascinating historical secrets, but unlike monuments on land, they're largely hidden from view. Now, archaeologists in the United Kingdom are using 3D printing to bring two historical shipwrecks to life for history enthusiasts and experts alike. Using data from photogrammetry (measuring the distance between objects from photographs) and sonar imaging, the researchers have produced scale models of a 17th-century shipwreck near Drumbeg, in Scotland, and the remains of the HMHS Anglia, a steamship that was used as a floating hospital during World War I. The steamship was sunk by a mine off the south coast of England. "It was a proof of concept for us, trying to establish what could be done using sound and light, but there are so many different applications you could use this for," said maritime archaeologist John McCarthy, a project manager at Wessex Archaeology who carried out dives at the Scottish site and was in charge of producing the 3D models.

Whether you're reading this article on a smartphone, tablet or laptop, chances are the device in front of you contains components from at least six countries spanning three or more continents. Its sleek exterior belies the complicated and intricate set of internal parts that only a global supply chain can provide. Over the past century, finished products made in a single country have become increasingly hard to find as globalization -- weighted a term as it is -- has stretched supply chains to the ends of the Earth. Now, anything from planes, trains and automobiles to computers, cellphones and appliances can trace its hundreds of pieces to nearly as many companies around the world. And its assembly might take place in a different country still.

A new maker of self-driving vehicles burst onto the scene Thursday in partnership with IBM's supercomputer platform Watson, and it is ready to roll right …

Alphabet Inc., the owner of Google, is using its computing prowess to branch out into a dizzying array of new areas, from medical diagnoses to "transformative" partnerships between humans and artificial intelligence, laying out its ambition at the company's annual shareholder meeting. Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt on Wednesday also disclosed that the company's Fiber fast internet service has new wireless technology that will cut the cost of hooking up homes because it won't have to dig up people's gardens to lay fiber optic cables. This may make build-outs cheaper and is probably part of the reason Fiber is expanding to 22 cities across the U.S. Schmidt's comments on the web service, in response to a shareholder question, came at an upbeat gathering at the company's Silicon Valley headquarters that was typically sparsely attended. Sundar Pichai, the Google chief executive officer, attended, along with Ruth Porat, who's been chief financial officer for just more than a year. David Drummond, chief legal officer, also turned up, but no Larry Page or Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google.

Within the traditional kids's e book "Charlotte's Internet," people are amazed by a gifted spider that may weave phrases into her net. Spider-inspired robots may additionally sometime amaze people by behaving as cell 3D printers that squirt liquid plastic as an alternative of spinning silk. The German know-how large Siemens has been creating robotic and synthetic intelligence applied sciences that might doubtlessly allow swarms of such spider-worker robots to work collectively in constructing plane and ships. The dream of cellular 3D printing arose from an annual Siemens competitors that asks firm researchers to suggest and vote on technological innovation tasks. The spider-worker robots proposed by the U.S. area of Siemens received the hearts and minds of the corporate's engineers and robotics researchers and formally kicked off in January 2014.

Futurist, author and inventor Ray Kurzweil delivered a keynote speech to 800 attendees at 2016 Tech Leadership Conference in Waterloo, Canada. Ray Kurzweil envisions the future -- by year 2020, 3D printing will transform manufacturing. People will print their own clothing, he predicts. In Asia, builders are making small office buildings using modules made by 3D printers. Inventors created jet engines and cars out of printed parts, Kurzweil says. Impact on a declining manufacturing industry could be catastrophic. Jobs will be lost, manufacturing will turn into an information industry, but there's a silver lining behind industry disruption, he says. The fashion industry will explode with new ideas as people design, make and share clothes using 3D printers. Kurzweil sees manufacturing moving into open source design and production.

The building site of the future is going to look very different to the one we are all used to today. Instead of men in high-visibility jackets and hard hats, there are going to be drones buzzing overhead, robotic bulldozers and 3D printers churning out new structures. That at least is the hope of those making technological solutions. But first they have to convince the traditionally risk-averse construction industry that such change is necessary. US start-up Skycatch is using drones on some high-profile building projects - although it cannot name them because of commercial sensitivity.

I don't know why Siemens thinks "SiSpis" is a less-creepy name than "robot spider." Shipbuilding is a community effort. For Siemens, that community in the future won't just be the engineers, designers, and workmen on a project: it will also include an army of small robot spiders, 3D printing and weaving together plastic to build that hull. Think of it like a normal shipbuilding facility, only with hundreds of tiny scurrying parts, all working together. To accomplish this, the robots use onboard cameras as well as a laser scanner to interpret their immediate environment.

If you're afraid of spiders, then you might find Siemens's vision for future manufacturing lines a bit alarming. In a lab in Princeton, New Jersey, the company's researchers are testing spider-like robots that extrude not silk but plastic, thanks to portable 3-D printers. The robots can work together autonomously to create simple objects. The work is at an early stage, but it hints at where manufacturing may be headed, thanks to more sophisticated robot hardware, smarter control software, and new ways of forming components using 3-D printing. Unlike a conventional robotic production line, which has to be carefully reconfigured for each new product, a team of mobile manufacturing bots would simply be given the latest design and left to go to work. Livio Dalloro, head of product design, modeling, and simulation at Siemens, says that the robots (which, unlike actual spiders, have only six legs) can currently produce only very simple objects, like cubes, but the idea is that they would eventually clamber around a larger, more complex object, building it as they go.

Handheld 3D printing pens seem like a cheaper alternative to those giant autonomous boxes, but they require more patience than most of us can muster, and a decent level of artistic capability. This robot arm can help with the latter, by controlling where the pen can move to ensure better results. Like with a dedicated 3D printer, the Guided Hand system still requires a 3D model to work from. It won't improve your freehand creations. But if you wanted to recreate the Stanford Bunny, the robot arm attached to your 3D printing pen provides various types of feedback both guiding the motion of the pen, but also limiting where it can move.